On JavaScript and Flash

I am a semi-paranoid web-surfer. That is to say, I do have JavaScript enabled but I temper it with the NoScript plug-in for Firefox. The same goes for Flash, in that I inherently block all Flash objects with the Flashblock extension. The difference between these two is that I frequently “white-list” sites’ JavaScript (once I’m satisfied that the scripts they have are intentional and their own, or shared scripts for mashup services, etc.) while I very rarely do so with Flash. Mostly that is because I don’t like auto-play music, videos, etc. In some cases, I do white-list Flash sources.

I mention this only so that I can also make this statement: I will use some degree of JavaScript on this blog, though I have no current plans for Flash (if these plans change, I’ll blog about it as well as update this page). I will always do my best to have the JavaScript usage degrade gracefully for those users who prefer not to enable it at all, because I understand the reasoning behind that. Mostly, I will be using jQuery and some plug-ins, all to (hopefully) enhance the user-experience here on the blog. In the future, I may also do some mash-ups of my own, as well. I currently have two widgets on the middle column that pull updates from Twitter.

To put the more security-conscious readers at ease, I will make an effort to keep an up-to-date list of the domains and reasons for the scripts that I use, below.

dereferenced.com – This would be scripts that are a part of WordPress, and any stuff I add specifically (like jQuery and plug-ins) or write myself.

twitter.com

twimg.com – These two are both part of the Twitter widgets I currently have, that display my recent stream activity as well as that of the cpan_linked Twitter account.

github.com

gist.github.com – I will occasionally link to and post bits from either GitHub repositories or gists.